s foods and drinks. These have been imported
from far Arabia and India; they have been brought from distant
Persia and Media. With all their variety, no taste, however
fitful, need go unsatisfied.

What a motley crowd is on the streets! They hear the Aramaic
speech of Palestine, which Quintus has been taught by his Athenian
tutor, and their ears also catch the accents of other foreign
tongues. They meet traders from western Zidon, sailors from Crete,
bearded Idumaeans from beyond Judaea, and scholars from far
Alexandria. Magnificent Jerusalem it is! Yet destined soon to
fall. For the day draws near when the Roman Titus shall weep on
Scopus over its fading splendors and then shall smite it to the
dust.

One purchase only does Quintus make. In a shop where Egyptian
wares are sold he says to Aulus:

"Look on this scarab, this sacred beetle, which has been shaped by
some workman down in Thebae on the Nile. We may be sure that no
people believes more intensely in a future life. What compliment
they pay this physical frame of men when they hold that embalmment
restores to the soul its former body! After the judgment of
Osiris, if their lives be true, the worthy shall enjoy the
companionship of the great god forever. No other people wears such
a visible emblem of their faith in another life. I will buy this
scarab for an amulet against accident and evil."

But where had the workman gone who once had shaped that token of
immortality? Whither had vanished his carver's skill? Where had
disappeared his projects and his dreams? Quintus is not thinking
of any proconsulship he may win, or even of the love light in the
eyes of Lucretia, as he climbs again the heights of Scopus. Rather
he is meditating on the departed maker of scarabs--and on the
destiny of the soul. For ages the philosophers have been
speculating about the future life. Familiar is Quintus with the
views of Laelius and Seneca, among the Roman inquirers, and with
the teachings of the great Grecians who have spoken in classic
Athens. But now the question leaps to the front. Quintus is in
the city where Ayran travelers and Persian magi and Egyptian
priests are busy telling their theories of immortality. He is in
the very streets, besides, where a sandaled Teacher from Nazareth
is declaring that the dead shall live again. If but half is true
that this strange Man is reputed to have said, no priest of Jupiter
has ever uttered at Rome so lum